MUSTANG PILOT KILLED

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27642, 26 April 1955, Page 15

MUSTANG PILOT KILLED

AIRCRAFT CRASHES NEAR SPRINGSTON

MACHINE BREAKS UP IN MID-AIR

Wreckage strewn over a square mile was all that was left of a Mustang fighter aircraft of No. 3 (Canterbury) Squadron, Territorial Air Force, after it crashed near Springston about 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. The pilot was killed instantly. He was: Pilot Officer Patrick Gilbert Vowles, aged 22, of 5 Strowan avenue, Fairfield, Hamilton, the son of Mrs M. A. Vowles, a widow, of the same address.

He was a final-year student for his degree in agricultural science at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln. Pilot Officer Vowles had taken off from the R.N.Z.A.F. station, Wigram. about 9 a.m. on a routine training flight. Three explosions accompanying the crash- were heard at Leeston, more than 10 miles from the crash. Eyewitnesses said the Mustang dived from a great height, and that about 2000 ft from the ground it began to disintegrate as the pilot tried to level out. The tailplane was torn away first, then the canopy crashed to the ground. Pieces of metal were raining down from the wreck as it plunged over the top of Mr K. Milne’s house in Maddisons road, less than 30ft from the ground. Only the starboard wing and the engine assembly were left when the descent ended in a paddock more than a mile from the first piece of wreckage. A sheet of flame and a high column of black smoke shot up as the last explosion came. A trail of twisted and blistered pieces spread more than 100 yards beyond the splintered engine. Residents rushed to the crash, but there was nothing they could do. An ambulance from Burnham and the Lincoln police arrived followed by an ambulance and a Are tender from Wigram. Airmen were set to guard every piece of wreckage until the court of inquiry had assembled. Mr G. Keys, a farmer in whose property much of the wreckage fell, said he noticed the aircraft about half an hour before the accident. “He disappeared for a time, and the next thing I knew was a terrific scream as it began to dive. Within a few seconds I felt something was wrong, and as the aeroplane began to break up I started to run towards Mr Coles’s paddock, where it finished up. “We got there as it burst into flames. We could see the pilot, but we could ’not get to him. The fire didn’t last very long—it was mostly black smoke —and after that we waited for the Air Force people to come,” Mr Keys said. Yesterday the body of the pilot was flown to Hamilton in a Royal New Zealand Air Force Devon aircraft. Five officers of No. 3 Squadron and a student from Lincoln College acted as escort. Full military honours will be given at the funeral in Hamilton today. A court of inquiry was set up soon after the crash, with Wing Commander P. P. O’Brien, commanding officer of R.N.Z.A.F. station, Taieri; as president. Members of the court are Squadron Leader C. Kingsford, of the R.N.Z.A.F. station, Woodbourne, and Flight Lieutenant A. Wood, of Air Department, Wellington.

An inquest into the death was opened for evidence of identification yesterday morning.